1. Bette Nesmith Graham (1924-1980) and Liquid Paper.
Liquid Paper was the brainchild of a quick-thinking woman
with poor typing skills. Bette Nesmith Graham, in an effort
to cover her typing mistakes, decided to do what painters
did when they made mistakes – she painted over them.
With a bottle of white paint and a watercolor brush,
Graham started on the road to fame and fortune as the
inventor of Liquid Paper. At age 17, Graham got a
secretarial job. She worked her way up from the typing
pool to executive secretary, but found a large hurdle along
the way – electric typewriters. These new inventions (and
her typing errors) caused her all sorts of problems. The
carbon-film ribbons in the new machines made a mess
when Graham tried to fix her mistakes with a pencil eraser.
The inspiration to solve her predicament came from
holiday window painters who simply brushed over
smudges and flaws in their work. She decided the trick
would work for her and covered her mistakes with a white,
water-based paint. In 1956, Graham's invention was so
popular that she was making batches of "Mistake Out" in
her kitchen and garage. When demand skyrocketed, she
changed the name to "Liquid Paper" and applied for a
patent and a trademark. By 1975, the company employed
200 people, made 25 million bottles of Liquid Paper and
distributed the product to 31 countries. Graham sold the
company four years later to Gillette Corporation for $47.5
million.